The British Army has again suspended its controversial combat vehicles Ajax after dozens of soldiers fell ill after traveling in them. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense assures that ‘around 30 troops presented symptoms related to noise and vibrations’ during a recent exercise with these armored chains.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the Army immediately decreed a two-week pause in the use of Ajax following exercise Iron Fist, carried out on Salisbury Plain last weekend. The ‘vast majority’ of the affected soldiers ‘have already been medically discharged and continue to serve’, although some ‘continue to receive specialized medical care’.
The soldiers who fell ill would have passed between 10 and 15 hours inside the vehicles. After that time, some got out of the vehicle vomiting while others did tremblingaccording to The Times.
The ministry has assured that it will continue testing the combat vehicle so that ‘any problem can be identified and resolved’. However, this is not the first time something like this has happened with Ajax.
During the summer, Several soldiers had to be hospitalized after suffering hearing damage and other injuries caused by the high level of noise and vibrations inside vehicles. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Defense revealed that a ‘small number’ of soldiers had also reported noise and vibration problems after some tests. Despite these precedents, a ministry spokesperson told Sky News that, following an investigation, ‘no systemic problems were detected’.
Also in this same month, the Ministry of Defense announced the initial operational capacity of the Ajax, IOC for its acronym in English, initially planned for 2017. To achieve it, the British Army had to have a squadron of 27 vehicles ready for deployment from among the 165 which have already been delivered by the manufacturer General Dynamics. The total will be 589 Ajax in six different versions: armored recovery vehicle Atlasarmored repair vehicle Apolloarmored personnel carrier Aresreconnaissance vehicle Ajaxcommand post Athena and sapper vehicle Argus.
If we go further back, we find that the problems come from afar. In 2021, a Ministry of Defense review revealed that For almost two years, the commanders knew that the Ajax were putting troops at risk due to noise problems. The danger of hearing damage was identified in 2018but the first time his tests were suspended he did not arrive until 2020. A year later, more than 300 soldiers had undergone audiometry tests and 17 were still receiving specialized treatment.
A 2021 report from Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British study center specialized in defense and security, highlighted the excess of noise and vibrations and proposed ‘if the vehicle can be fixed and if it is worth saving’.
RUSI pointed out that the main noise problem comes from Bowman radio headphone integrationwhich capture the sound of the engine of an already noisy vehicle and bring it directly to the crew’s ears, something that can be corrected with other headphones but which leaves in question how the acoustic tests were carried out.
More serious, according to the institute, is the problem of vibrations, linked in part to quality control failures in the manufacture of the helmets by General Dynamics Land Systems UK, which not only cause great discomfort to the crew, but also they prevent stabilization of the main weapon while underway, damage electronic systems and cause an abnormal rate of component breakage such as the tension wheel and the rear wheels.